We can here see, then, more clearly where Paley stumbled. He
virtually assumed that the relations subsisting between the Deity and the
universe were such, that the exceptional adaptations met with in the
organised part of the latter cannot have been due to the same intellectual
_processes_ as was the rest of the universe--or that, if they were, still
they yielded better evidence of having been due to these processes than
does the rest of the universe. And it is easy to perceive that his error
arose from his pre-formed belief in special creation. So long as a man
regards every living organism which he sees as the lineal descendant of a
precisely similar organism originally struck out by the immediate fiat of
Deity, so long is he justified in holding his axiom, "Contrivance must have
had a contriver." For "adaptation" then becomes to our minds the synonym of
"contrivance"--it being utterly inconceivable that the numberless
adaptations found in any living organism could have resulted in any other
way than by intelligent contrivance, at the time when this organism was in
the first instance _suddenly_ introduced into its complex conditions of
life. Still, as an argument, this is of course merely reasoning in a
circle: we adopt a hypothesis which presupposes the existence of a Deity as
the first step in the proof of his existence. I do not say that Paley
committed this error expressly, but merely that if it had not been for his
pre-formed conviction as to the truth of the special-creation theory, he
would probably not have written his "Natural Theology.
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